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Wednesday, 28 October 2015

Back in July, London's Metropolitan
Police admitted that it was still conducting a criminal
investigation it launched two years ago into journalists who have
reported on Edward Snowden's leaked documents.

Since then, I have been trying to find
out more details about the investigation through the Freedom of
Information Act. The Met is refusing to disclose virtually anything
about the probe, but recently it did provide me with one new detail:

Specialist Operations under the
direction of AC Mark Rowley is the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service]
unit involved in the
investigation related to the Snowden documents.

Rowley (pictured below) has taken over the
Snowden investigation from Cressida Dick, the Met's former head of
Specialist Operations, who quit the force in December last year to take up a secret new job at the Foreign Office. The Met confirmed this in an emailed letter it sent me late last month (I'd have written about it sooner but have been a bitswamped with other projects).

Rowley is an expert in
covert surveillance methods and pioneered the development of new police spying techniques across the UK while working as a
detective superintendent in the 1990s with the National Criminal
Intelligence Service. Notably, he recently made clear he has no
qualms about monitoring journalists' communications if he deems it
necessary to “chase down criminals." He has also boasted about
the London police being at the “cutting edge” of covert
surveillance through the use of “specialist hardware and software.”
(These specialist tools include powerful portable spying devices the Met uses
to monitor mobile phone communications across targeted areas of
London, as I reported back in 2011.)

The Met first announced it had launched
an investigation related to the Snowden documents in August 2013,
saying the criminal probe was being headed by its Counter Terrorism
Command, which is a division of the Specialist Operations department.
In December 2013, Rowley's predecessor Cressida Dick acknowledged
during a parliamentary hearing that the investigation was looking at
whether reporters at TheGuardian had committed
criminal offenses for their role in revealing secret surveillance
operations exposed in the Snowden documents.

For almost seven months earlier this
year, the Met refused to confirm or deny whether the investigation
remained ongoing, repeatedly claiming doing so would be “detrimental
to national security.” But the force performed a sudden volte-face on its position in late
July following an intervention from the Information Commissioner’s
Office, the public body that enforces the UK’s freedom of
information laws.

I'm currently seeking more information
about the investigation, such as details about how much money it has
cost the taxpayer to date and the names of outside agencies or contractors
that have assisted. The Met has so far refused to release this
information — again spuriously claiming that doing so could somehow jeopardise national security — but I have lodged an appeal in an
effort to have this decision reversed. Will post updates as and when
I have them.